Town has an obligation to enforce the law. The lawsuit is just a step in that administrative process, it was not a subjective spending decision. A complaint was made and it kicked off a process that led to this when the property owner began ignoring the town.
This has been going on for 8 years based on your timeline. That’s enough time to establish a trend that needs a resolution. Is there any progress on legal parking?
Increasing legal parking is the true solution. In fact, if the school provided a sufficient amount of parking spots, Ms. Annie would be out of business as there would be no need for her lot.
You can talk to them if you've like: but I have been told by the school that they don't see a problem. They never promised or attempt to provide a parking spot for all underclassmen, and that AFHS is not unique and many schools are in the same situation, and although having a wait list is not ideal it is far from an emergency and they do provide school buses for everyone.
There is a lot of on street parking nearby. I have been told since this came up that students have felt pinched here because HOA's etc have threatened them about parking in the neighborhoods or such. I am happy to help remind HOA's that they are public roads maintained and paid for by the town and town tax dollars, if necessary.
King Terry..., hmm you mean like this lawsuit Town of Apex v. Rubin? The Town of Apex, "trespassing" on private property, to put in a sewer line for the private good of a Builder? Which the Town of Apex lost in the NC Supreme Court !! The Town attorney, who retired in July 2026/yr. was totally involved in all of this right? Yes.. this is how the town of Apex rolls !! >> https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/2025/206pa21.html
I’ve lived in Apex for 20 years. And tonight I want to add my voice to the chorus pushing back against ALPRs, Flock, and police drones.
There’s a reason people all over this country are fighting back against these cameras right now. In Michigan, West Virginia, and New York, residents have, out of desperation, cut the cameras down. In California, a driver rammed his truck into three of them in a row. And in Florida, there is a retired man who has spent days sitting in a lawn chair, holding up a piece of cardboard, just to block the camera's lens. These people are frustrated and worried about being tracked, and sadly these people felt the need to take matters into their own hands. No one wants that. I don’t want that.
And it’s not only individuals. City governments are cancelling their Flock contracts — in Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Washington state, and more. Some of the biggest cities in the country — Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Flagstaff — have walked away. And close to home, Hillsborough and Pittsboro have done the same.
Why? Because the misuse keeps happening. There are not enough controls in place. In Arizona an officer used Flock to track his own wife. In Mooresville an officer was arrested for using Flock to follow an ex-spouse. And in Georgia, six police employees were fired for searching the system to look up family members and acquaintances who had nothing to do with any investigation.
Six people. Fired. In one department. And I want to be clear: every example I just gave you happened in the past week. Not the past year — the past week.
So here’s where I land. I trust our Apex Police. I trust our Chief. I trust them with my life. They were trained and doing this job long before any of this unchecked and unwanted technology existed. And I know they are capable enough to keep us safe without a camera on every corner or more drones in the sky.
We are Apex — the Peak of Good Living. We are not Apex — the Peak of Surveillance. No more cameras. No Flock. No Axon. And absolutely No drones.
I think this whole flock camera protest is just like the fire station. Misinformation. Before I decide I want to see the statistics on how many valid arrests have been made vs. The misuse claims everyone is so worried about. You posted a one sided view but you're tracked on more data points by your cell phone. are you protesting that too?
Fair ask, K. Here's what I'd say, with actual data. No misinformation.
Let's start there: the arrest numbers people cite come from Flock's own self-reported "impact" surveys. The independent numbers are worse. LAPD's Inspector General audited the system in July 2025 and found a 32.3% error rate. 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in two months, each one an innocent driver getting pulled over. Roseville PD's own data on 1,427 alerts showed the software misread the plate in 71% of them.
In Toledo, a misread "7" as a "2" ended with Brandon Upchurch attacked by a police dog and a $35,000 settlement. If the pro-camera side had strong numbers, they'd be published. Most departments don't publish them at all..which is the oversight problem, not an answer to it.
On misuse, this isn't a rumor. The Institute for Justice has documented 44 separate incidents of officers using plate readers to stalk people. A Haines City, FL officer ran his estranged wife's plate 700+ times. A Kansas police chief ran an ex and her new boyfriend 200+ times. A Milwaukee officer, just undr 180 times in two months. Three Bibb County, GA deputies were charged with stalking this month. The part that should bother everyone: almost none of these were caught by internal audits. Victims found them, several through a site everyone should check out: HaveIBeenFlocked.com
Bigger than rogue cops is what's authorized. April 2025, Johnson County TX: a deputy searched 6,809 networks (83,345 cameras) to find a woman who'd had an abortion. The reason typed into the log was literally "had an abortion, search for female." The sheriff publicly called it a welfare check; the sworn affidavit called it a death investigation of a non-viable fetus, and deputies asked prosecutors about charging her. Illinois' Secretary of State audited Flock in August 2025 and found it violated state law barring this data from immigration and abortion enforcement. CBP had been given access, along with 551 out-of-state agencies. Evanston and Oak Park cancelled their contracts. EFF reviewed 12 million searches by 3,900+ agencies and found roughly 20% used reasons as meaningless as "investigation" while others were logged as "no kings," "KINGS DAY PROTEST," and, in one Oregon case, "hehehe."
As for misinformation: Flock told the Oshkosh city council its system doesn't build movement heat maps. It does. Council revoked approval the next morning. It told Loveland, CO that federal agencies had no access while holding CBP and DHS contracts. It told Urbana it designed its system with the ACLU..the ACLU says that never happened.
The phone comparison is the part I'd push hardest on. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held police need a warrant to get your phone's location history. Flock requires no warrant, no judge, and no notice. This is why I came and spoke, as well as the lack of controls. Today in Apex and everywhere, any officer with a login can search a nationwide network. I also chose my cell carrier, can turn off location, and can leave the phone home. Verizon can't handcuff me. As you said, you're already tracked by a company isn't consent for the government to do it without a warrant.
You made a great argument for less surveillance, not more.
I'm not against solving crimes. Require a warrant or documented supervisor approval with a specific case number, publish the audit logs quarterly, cap retention at days not weeks, ban out-of-state and federal sharing, and put real penalties on misuse. Support that and I'll drop my objection. Absent it, trust us, it's fine is the genuinely one-sided view.
The town isn't enforcing the laws fairly. They wrote a law effecting one person who wasn't violating the law for years till the council passed this law. Then they spend more money on an attorney then they could collect in fines. This was a extremely over reach by the council and whoever approved paying this attorney to collect these fines should have the money come out of their own pocket.
Literally everything - I explained above. If you didn’t believe it there and choose to believe misinformation instead, I doubt me repeating the timeline and process in the comments will convince you.
It's not a new law. Town Council is not involved in enforcement. Defendant will be responsible for legal fees. Town is obligated to take these actions.
Again what's not true, considering after this a few years ago from basically affecting this one person. Because people built around the land all of a sudden things change no. She was there first
“What attracted me to Apex is its small town charm.”
This is an expression I have heard many times. It is the Christmas parade, 4th of July celebration of bikes, it is the pancake breakfast. It is the old shops, churches, preserved homes and yes, the volunteer fire house. It stands proudly above the log pond and the entrance to our town. It not only serves a function, in keeping our town safe, but also as a memorial to those who built it and then gave generously to protect Apex.
What makes Apex different from other towns is that we have preserved our buildings downtown. One exception, the out of character, half empty office building that coincidently sits across from the fire house.
I have seen the AI generated rendering of the museum/office building and it is a demolish - rebuild. While a beautiful building, it is a hollow tribute and a significant loss.
I encourage you to protect the character and charm of downtown. Not all knockdowns are improvements.
The problem is unfettered development. The town continues to approve massive construction of new townhomes and apartments in the AFHS area knowing that school is capped or overcrowded. They say to WCPSS you didn’t build enough parking but it’s passing the buck on a problem Apex TC created. Are you really surprised parking is an issue with the explosion of unchecked growth.?
I think having a healthy distrust of companies and government is warranted. I think Flock is providing a very valuable service to our community and helping to keep us safe. Yes, better controls are needed and Flock is working to put those in place. But they only capture license plates.
Apex PD has done a great job in keeping our community safe. But if Apex starts becoming the target of criminals our small police force will have a hard time handling the uptick. I was the victim of a home invasion before moving to Apex and feeling safe again. My previous neighborhood suffered many break-ins within a short period of time and we had to implement civilian patrols (neighborhood watch) in a very nice neighborhood. Let’s not be blinded by presumed civil liberties at the expense of keeping our community safe.
Does it have to be Flock? Do you feel that ALPRs are necessary to keep our communities safe? What is it about the "very valuable service" that Flock provides that no other solution can?
One of my biggest concerns is data ownership. Who owns the footage and data collected by the cameras: Flock or the City of Apex? I'm willing to accept that the city and private businesses use security cameras, but the assumption is that they have complete control over the data they record. I find it unacceptable that a third party can determine how long the footage can be retained, what can be done with it, and who can access it.
Speaking of which, I don't want law enforcement outside of Apex to have such easy access to footage of our town. As far as I understand, external entities are traditionally supposed to request permission from our law enforcement agencies if they have evidence or reasonable suspicion that someone who has been here is involved in a crime somewhere else. Police in Georgia shouldn't have easy, immediate access to footage of our town.
Flock also doesn't "only capture license plates." Their cameras record faces as well.
"Let’s not be blinded by presumed civil liberties at the expense of keeping our community safe" sounds like such a sad and dystopian sentiment. I just can't accept that having this much surveillance in our daily lives is necessary or OK.
And I find it particularly disturbing that such a technology has been introduced into our community without public comment first. (That is, as far as I'm aware. I moved here after the Flock cameras were installed.)
I've seen Flock cameras set up in certain neighborhoods, and I presume that that particular HOA had a discussion and voted on it, in which case, it is what it is. But seeing a Flock camera set up outside the parking lot of the Kelly Road playground -- a public space -- is upsetting.
No Facial Recognition: Standard Flock Safety systems are not built or marketed to store biometric data or identify drivers and passengers.
Vehicle Focus: The fixed cameras capture still images of passing cars, logging plates, bumper stickers, and vehicle characteristics rather than human demographic data.
Data Limits: Captured data is typically set to automatically delete after 30 days unless saved for an active police investigation.
Please do your own research and determine your level of comfort with this technology. While it might seem Big-Brotherish, it’s helping to keep us safe.
Crime happens. Don’t think because we live in a bubble here that it won’t happen to you.
I'm confused - whose "Official Stance" is this, yours or Flock's? Did you copy this from the Flock website? Is this an AI-generated response?
To clarify, the "Standard Flock Safety systems" may not be "built or marketed to store biometric data or identify drivers and passengers", but they still record faces nonetheless. We know this from leaked footage from ALPRs, and the fact that they have cameras for indoor use.
I'm also surprised that this response didn't include the fact that Flock recently updated their recommended data retention from 30 to 7 days as a way to appease concerned citizens. Regardless, it still doesn't address the fact that Apex doesn't own the footage.
It seems you are quite the fan of Flock. Would you feel the same way about Axon, or any other third party company surveilling and owning those recordings, and then permitting other law enforcement entities access to that footage?
Why do you feel that they are necessary for keeping our communities safe? What was wrong with putting together a neighborhood watch? Why are localized surveillance tools (like a camera that records to a server owned by the the business owner) insufficient?
Ben Franklin in 1755: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The half people forget is the second half.
It isn't only that you lose the liberty. It's that you don't get the safety either.
What we actually purchased was ten-ish cameras, a subscription, a national query network we don't control, and a set of promises from a company with a documented record of breaking them.
I support ALPR technology being used in Apex to allow the PD to receive a notification when a stolen or wanted person/vehicle enter our town limits so they can capture criminals and keep our town safe. We are being surveilled by location tracking on our phones without dissent. Red light cameras take an image of your face. ALPR’s only capture your license plate and is deleted after a period of time. I don’t care if they figure out where I shop or exercise. It is public record where I live.
I feel like there are two issues: ALPR as a technology and the massive private national database of everyones movements built by Flock that we are somehow paying them to ingest our citizens data into and also paying them to access, while they sell that data to other organizations
In theory we control who can access our citizens data, but what this means is we tell Flock who can access it, and hope they listen, and hope they aren't hacked etc. In practice it seems the expectation is that every law enforcement agency in the country shares with every other law enforcement agency in the country
I don't know the solution is but my instinct is this database just shouldn't exist as one big unit, held by a private company. And that it should require a court order or something to even be searched
It's really not about ALPR as a technology or concept that makes me uncomfortable
Yes, I agree with you. Flock is in the process of implementing better controls and approval processes as well as alerting to catch those that may be using the data outside of crime prevention. I think we should still push to make Flock accountable but in my view the benefits are clear. Keep our community safe.
I appreciate that we're closer than it might look.
But I'd point at the shape of that sentence: Flock is in the process of implementing better controls, and we should still push to make Flock accountable.
Read it again.
It concedes that the system is operating right now without the controls that would make it acceptable, and that holding it accountable is something we'll have to keep fighting for indefinitely. That's not a reassurance. That's a description of the problem.
A protection you have to keep asking a vendor to honor isn't a protection. It's a courtesy, revocable at will.
Consider who's promising. Flock told Loveland, Colorado that it had no federal contracts and that federal agencies had no access..,it had CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't produce movement heat maps... it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. And its own celebrated safeguard against improper abortion-related searches was defeated by officers typing "investigation," or literally "hehehe," into the justification box... 111 and 20 times in a single Oregon department in a single month. That's the same category of fix now being described as "better controls and approval processes."
And look at how the new ones work.
The accountability features Flock announced this month depend on the customer agency to enforce them. An audit log nobody reviews isn't a control, it's a receipt.
A free-text justification field isn't an approval process, it's a formality.
Real controls look like a warrant requirement, a retention limit measured in days, a hard prohibition on out-of-network queries, and published audits. None of which Flock can grant us, because they're terms we'd have to impose.
The sequencing is the whole game.
Apex signed in January 2025 and is negotiating the rules in year two, while the vendor holds the data and the leverage. The contract expires in January 2027. That renewal is the only moment we have any.
Asking for controls afterward is asking permission; requiring them beforehand is governing. (Is the council listening?)
And "the benefits are clear" should be easy to prove. Then let's see the numbers. How many Apex cases, cleared how, that wouldn't have been cleared otherwise? Our chief's own framing is stolen vehicles. If the benefit is clear, it's publishable... and it should be on the table before we re-up, not asserted.
Which brings me to the thing Franklin said in 1755:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The half people forget is the second half. It isn't only that you lose the liberty. It's that you don't get the safety either. What we actually purchased was ten-ish cameras, a subscription, a national query network we don't control, and a set of promises from a company with a documented record of breaking them.
Meanwhile the thing the earlier commenter was actually afraid of, someone kicking in a door, is not something a plate reader prevents.
We don't demand warrants because we distrust the Chief.
We demand them because the rules have to hold when someone we haven't met yet has the keys.
Controls that only work if good people are in charge aren't controls. They're luck.
I want to start where you're both strongest. A home invasion is a real thing that happened to a real person, and Apex PD has earned the trust it has. Nothing below argues that crime doesn't matter or that our officers are acting in bad faith.
But 'they only capture license plates' is no longer accurate, and most of the rest of the argument rests on it. Flock now sells video clips and live feeds from those same poles, AI natural-language search of that footage, matching by vehicle color/make/damage/bumper stickers, integration with commercial data-broker "people lookup" services so an officer can jump from a plate to a person, a Business Network that lets private companies build shared watchlists, and analytics that algorithmically flag vehicles as suspicious which inverts the entire premise, generating suspicion instead of investigating it.
None of that required a second vote in Apex. It arrives by software update, under a contract we already signed.
"Deleted after a period of time" is a promise about one copy. The data doesn't stay in Apex. EFF obtained audit logs showing more than 12 million searches by over 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. One Texas search in an abortion investigation, annotated "had an abortion, search for female" reached 6,809 networks and 83,345 cameras nationwide. More than 80 agencies ran searches using anti-Roma slurs, frequently with no crime listed at all. Nineteen agencies ran searches tied to the No Kings protests. A 30-day deletion window touches none of that; once a query runs and the result lands in a case file, it lives on. Closer to home: an Apex resident documented 50 photographs of his own car during a single six-minute drive.
On 'better controls are coming' consider who is promising. Flock told Loveland, Colorado that federal agencies had no access and that it held no federal contracts; it held CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't generate movement heat maps; it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. Its own abortion-search safeguard was defeated by officers typing "investigation" or "hehehe" into the justification field, 111 and 20 times respectively in one Oregon departmnt in one month. The accountability features it announced this month depend on the customer to enforce them. Chief Johansen says "we do not share with federal entities, hard stop," and I believe that's his sincere intent but that same assurance was given sincerely in towns where it turned out not to be true, and Raleigh's logs already show searches labeled ICE.
The phone comparison actually cuts the other way. In June the Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that location-history searches require a warrant, and expressly rejected the claim that short-term location data is harmless because even brief data reveals trips to psychiatric offices, abortion clinics, treatment centers. That is almost word for word Flock's defense of itself ("just point-in-time images of public roads"). And the analogies don't hold up: you chose to carry a phone and can leave it at home; a red light camera fires because someone ran a light. These cameras photograph every driver, continuously, with no suspicion of anything. Schmidt v. Norfolk is pending in the Fourth Circuit right now, this is the court that governs North Carolina.
Finally, the trade itself is smaller than advertised. ALPRs are a retrospective tool for vehicle-related cases...the clearance benefit shows up mainly in auto theft, and the evidence that they deter anything is thin.
Stolen vehicles are what our own chief points to. That's worth something. It's not a shield against a break-in per se.
So I'd push back on the phrase presumed civil liberties. Karen, I believe you when you say you have nothing to hide.
The protection isn't for you.
It's for the neighbor whose ex-partner wears a badge, the household with mixed immigration status, the person driving to a clinic or a recovery meeting or a demonstration.
You can waive your own privacy.
You can't waive theirs.
Our contract expires in January 2027. Hillsborough and Chatham County have already walked away, as have Austin, Evanston, and Eugene. Asking for a warrant standard, a hard local-only rule, a short retention limit and published audit logs before renewal isn't blindness to crime..it's the ordinary price citizens charge government for power.
Safety purchased with permanent, suspicionless tracking of everyone's movements isn't a bargain. It's a subscription.
"We are being surveilled by location tracking on our phones without dissent."
Respectfully, every part of that is wrong, and it's the load-bearing claim in the whole argument.
There has been enormous dissent and it won. Phone location is the most litigated, legislated, and regulated surveillance issue of the past decade. Carpenter (2018) held that police need a warrant for your phone's location history. This June, in Chatrie, the Supreme Court reaffirmed and extended that, and specifically rejected the idea that short-term location data is harmless because even a brief trail reveals visits to psychiatric offices, clinics, and treatment centers. In May, the FTC banned the data broker Kochava from selling sensitive location data at all. The House has passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act to stop agencies from simply buying what they'd otherwise need a warrant to get.
That's not acquiescence.
That's a decade of people fighting and winning.
And notice what they won on. Every one of those rulings rests on reasoning that condemns Flock rather than excusing it: that a record of where a person's vehicle has been, compiled indiscriminately and searchable after the fact, is a search and that the government needs a reason and a judge before it gets one.
You consented to the phone. Nobody consented to this. You bought the device, you carry it by choice, you can deny an app location access, turn the radio off, or leave it on the counter. When Apple finally asked people plainly whether they wanted to be tracked, the overwhelming majority said no which is your dissent, expressed the moment anyone bothered to ask.
There is no such prompt for Flock.
There is no setting, no opt-out, and no way to drive to work in Apex without being photographed and logged. That difference isn't a technicality; consent is the entire thing.
And the watcher is different. Google logging your location to sell you shoes is a commercial harm. A police-operated camera network exists to generate evidence for prosecution. Same data, categorically different stakes..one can annoy you, the other can charge you, jail you, or hand you to ICE. The Fourth Amendment binds one and not the other for exactly that reason.
So the phone comparison gets it backwards. Phone location is the one kind of tracking we've actually built rules around: warrants, judges, FTC enforcement. Flock is the route around those rules: identical location history, no warrant, no judge, no notice to anyone. Worse, Flock has announced plans to plug into commercial data brokers so an officer can go from a plate to a named person...which fuses the camera network to the very data-broker loophole Congress is trying to close.
Flock just the other day helped identify a suspect in Raleigh involving a murder. Too much misinformation out there that people believe. . Flock is another pair of eyes for the police
You're right about the case, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
Sheremy Gwenette Dillard, a beloved Wake County girls' basketball coach, was found stabbed to death in her Raleigh home on August 15. Rickey Harper was charged with first-degree murder and arrested the next afternoon in Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania. Raleigh police said Flock cameras helped them determine that Harper had driven away from the scene and helped develop the leads that identified him as a suspect. That's WRAL and ABC11. It's a real case and a real result, and Dillard's family got an arrest in about 26 hours.
Now look at what actually happened there, because it's the best argument for our position that anyone in this thread has offered. And I'm so glad you posted it.
Harper was her boyfriend. He lived in that house. When officers arrived on a welfare check and found her body, the man who lived there was gone. No camera network was needed to generate that suspicion... it was the first thing any detective in America would look at.
What Flock did was confirm his vehicle leaving and give them a direction. Genuinely valuable.
Also: exactly the kind of narrow, individualized query that every safeguard we've been asking for would permit without a second's delay.
That's the whole point. Nobody in this debate is arguing police shouldn't be able to search plate data for a named murder suspect in an active homicide.
Bring a case number and a plate to a magistrate and you get it, Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon, with time to spare. The dispute has never been about Rickey Harper. It's about the millions of us who aren't Rickey Harper, whose movements are recorded continuously and held against the day somebody wants to look.
Flock's own audit logs obtained by EFF, not invented by activists show more than 12 million searches by 3,900+ agencies in under a year, including hundreds tied to political protests, searches run with anti-Roma slurs and no crime listed, and a Texas abortion investigation query that swept 83,345 cameras nationwide.
The Dillard case and those searches came out of the same system. The only thing that separates them is a rule, and right now there isn't one.
On "another pair of eyes" I'd retire that metaphor, because it flatters the technology. A pair of eyes doesn't remember every car it has ever seen. It can't be asked, three weeks later, where you were on a Tuesday. It doesn't share what it saw with thousands of agencies in other states. That's not an extra officer on the corner, it's a searchable record of everyone's movements, which is a different thing in kind, not degree.
And on misinformation: the best-documented false statements in this whole controversy came from Flock. It told Loveland, Colorado it had no federal contracts while holding CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't generate heat maps; it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. I'll happily correct anything I've gotten wrong.
Here's where I'd actually meet you: Raleigh publishes its numbers: 306 leads, 244 cases cleared, 154 stolen vehicles recovered since January 2025. Fine.
Notice that not one of those clearances required keeping data on people who aren't suspects.
They came from targeted searches.
So let's have Apex publish its own numbers before the January 2027 renewal, and put the warrant standard, the retention limit, and the audit publication in the contract.
Terry? Agreed?
If the system is as valuable as the Dillard case suggests, it survives those terms easily.
If it can't survive them, that tells us something too.
The figure comes from Flock Safety’s own “2025 Impact Census,” published on their blog in May 2026 and updated through July. Here’s the primary source, read it yourself:
Their language is “missing persons.” Roughly 27 per day, more than one an hour. CNN repeated it in a July 2026 piece. An a16z partner — a firm that is an investor in Flock, which he didn’t mention — posted it on X where it got Community Noted. Somewhere between the blog post and your feed, “persons” quietly became “children.”
That single word swap is doing enormous work.
“Missing persons” in NCIC is dominated by three categories: runaway teenagers who come home on their own within days, adults with dementia who wandered (this is what Silver Alerts are for), and custodial-dispute cases where a parent took a kid. Those are real cases and finding people fast matters. But none of them are what “10,000 missing children” makes you picture. What you picture is stranger abduction. Stranger abductions in the US run roughly 100 per year, total, nationally. Not 10,000. About 100.
Here’s the tell. Flock has had a formal partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children since 2021, specifically for AMBER Alert integration. That partnership’s own publicized number, as of late 2025, is over 100 children recovered — cumulative, across roughly five years.
So the company’s own child-specific figure is ~100 over five years, and the number circulating as a child figure is 10,000 per year. That’s a two-orders-of-magnitude gap, and it exists entirely because someone dropped a noun.
Fair point on the number, so let me be precise about what it counts.
The roughly 100 figure is the federal estimate for what OJJDP calls stereotypical kidnappings: a stranger or slight acquaintance takes a child who is then transported more than 50 miles, held overnight, held for ransom, kept permanently, or killed.
That estimate was 105 in 2011 and 115 in 1997. It is deliberately narrow. Broader non-family abductions run around 58,000 and family abductions around 200,000.
So yes, the total is much larger.
The problem is that expanding the category moves toward crimes a plate camera does almost nothing about.
Family abductions were 59 percent of AMBER Alerts issued in 2023. Those are custody cases where the parent, the car, and usually the destination are already known.
On trafficking, this is where the argument really breaks.
Trafficking is not abduction, and conflating them is the single most common error in this debate. The Human Trafficking Institute found that of 71 new federal sex trafficking victims in 2021 where a recruitment method was known, exactly one involved kidnapping. A separate nine-year review of trafficking cases found fewer than 10 percent involved kidnapping at all. Polaris, which runs the national hotline, says flatly that traffickers rarely target people they don't know, and that most victims are recruited by romantic partners, family members, and acquaintances using manipulation rather than force. A trafficker who has spent two months grooming a sixteen-year-old on Instagram does not need to throw her in a van. There is no plate to flag.
Plate readers do occasionally work.
A one-year-old was taken from a stroller in Chamblee, Georgia and Flock cameras helped locate the SUV. Real case, real kid home safe. I'm not going to pretend the number is zero.
But look at the scale of the mechanism. In 2023 there were 183 AMBER Alert recoveries, of which 49 were direct results of the alert, and one in four of those came from a person spotting the described vehicle. That is roughly a dozen cases nationally, and those were human eyes.
Weigh that against what the network is actually queried for. As I mentioned, a Texas abortion investigation reached 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks. An Illinois Secretary of State audit found 262 immigration-related searches in one suburb over four months. EFF reviewed more than 12 million searches from 3,900 agencies and found hundreds tied to protests and activism. The ACLU of Massachusetts found officers routinely typing "investigation" or "susp" as their justification, and one Oregon department entered "hehehe" 20 times.
If the case for the cameras is child rescue, the audits are public. Go look at what percentage of the searches are child rescue.
Focusing on her relationship with the mayor misses the real issue facing our community. While we debate optics, the underlying problem remains unsolved—and our teens are the ones paying the price.
Critiquing a dedicated property owner on legal technicalities without acknowledging her intent to solve a local crisis sends the wrong message. It frames someone trying to help as a villain rather than a partner.
Once this story leaves the news cycle, our community will still need real solutions. We have an opportunity to set aside the rhetoric, acknowledge the good-faith efforts being made, and work together for our youth.
Opposer, please take a deep breath before focusing on your defense.
The poll question re: Ms Scott is misleading and inappropriate to the discussion here. Apex residents need to understand what is driving this lawsuit, that WE need to pay for to the tune of multiple times the amount being charged to Ms Scott. Is it that TOA isn't receiving profits from these parking fees? Seems ludicrous to continue pursuing this over $3,700. The actual Mayor is the only one of you elected officials who actually wants to help the owner and ease the parking situation there. Why is that? What is this particular property worth to the council?!
I agree that it's important for Apex residents to understand what is driving the lawsuit, because it's clear you have been misinformed.
This is a code enforcement action that doesn't involve the Council or any elected official. It's "automatic" - it's the step of the process the property is in because various letters, fines etc have been ignored.
This is actually an important concern because the poll and recap sends a message that paints her as someone breaking the law, aka a criminal. If that is the message you want to send are you willing to explicitly state that about this property owner?
What is driving the lawsuit is that she's ignoring the town's UDO (laws) about what is allowed to be done with her property and citizens have complained about it to the town and the town needs to enforce it's laws. The point of the fines isn't the money its to compel compliance. The mayor appears to "help" her because they're old friends, but he won't talk her into rezoning, which could bring her property into compliance, allow parking and solve all of this.
If she doesn’t want to rezone she doesn’t have to. She has the right to self determination. So the result the town might be pacified by is really if students don’t park there. School starts Monday. Students will just park in the neighborhoods on the town roads I guess. Everyone will then be happy and we can obviously move on to bigger and better things and feel GREAT about this outcome.
Well, read it. You will then understand that this is how the Town of Apex rolls!! The Town of Apex, allowed a sewer line to be placed on private property for the private good of a Builder !! Read it !!
I know that fire trucks are much larger than those of prior times. Seems to me the best idea is to move operations to a modern facility and repurpose the current facility, keeping its history front of mind.
emove all ALPR / Cameras. This is America We have Freedom and was and is paid for in Full by the Blood and Lives of Men Women and Children from 1776 and before. 24-7 surveillance is for People in Prison and People found Guilty of Crimes IE Ankle Monitors / Mr. Scott needs to be left alone. Pretty simple see previous statement. And the Mayor gave Her a pass in 25'. ( See WRAL public articles ) / The Station= It's been a issue even before the current Board Members. What to do? How about listen to The People of Apex ( I know that's hard for You to do and Understand ) Be Transparent ( Mandatory and You have not been ) .....But You were Elected for the People Not to do as You wish ( That needs to End ASAP ). * Footnote= If Someone really cares for Apex and want's to be a Hero how about put into Apex Plans Cemetery's For Us and Our Families. I am 54 / Went to Baucom / Grandparents moved here in 53' and I or My Children have no Dirt and can buy no Dirt here in Apex to be laid to Rest in. That would be "New Growth" The Board would go down in History in a Good way VS what is and has been going on........
Fair point on the number, so let me be precise about what it counts.
The roughly 100 figure is the federal estimate for what OJJDP calls stereotypical kidnappings: a stranger or slight acquaintance takes a child who is then transported more than 50 miles, held overnight, held for ransom, kept permanently, or killed.
That estimate was 105 in 2011 and 115 in 1997. It is deliberately narrow. Broader non-family abductions run around 58,000 and family abductions around 200,000.
So yes, the total is much larger.
The problem is that expanding the category moves toward crimes a plate camera does almost nothing about.
Family abductions were 59 percent of AMBER Alerts issued in 2023. Those are custody cases where the parent, the car, and usually the destination are already known.
On trafficking, this is where the argument really breaks.
Trafficking is not abduction, and conflating them is the single most common error in this debate. The Human Trafficking Institute found that of 71 new federal sex trafficking victims in 2021 where a recruitment method was known, exactly one involved kidnapping. A separate nine-year review of trafficking cases found fewer than 10 percent involved kidnapping at all. Polaris, which runs the national hotline, says flatly that traffickers rarely target people they don't know, and that most victims are recruited by romantic partners, family members, and acquaintances using manipulation rather than force. A trafficker who has spent two months grooming a sixteen-year-old on Instagram does not need to throw her in a van. There is no plate to flag.
Plate readers do occasionally work.
A one-year-old was taken from a stroller in Chamblee, Georgia and Flock cameras helped locate the SUV. Real case, real kid home safe. I'm not going to pretend the number is zero.
But look at the scale of the mechanism. In 2023 there were 183 AMBER Alert recoveries, of which 49 were direct results of the alert, and one in four of those came from a person spotting the described vehicle. That is roughly a dozen cases nationally, and those were human eyes.
Weigh that against what the network is actually queried for. As I mentioned, a Texas abortion investigation reached 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks. An Illinois Secretary of State audit found 262 immigration-related searches in one suburb over four months. EFF reviewed more than 12 million searches from 3,900 agencies and found hundreds tied to protests and activism. The ACLU of Massachusetts found officers routinely typing "investigation" or "susp" as their justification, and one Oregon department entered "hehehe" 20 times.
If the case for the cameras is child rescue, the audits are public. Go look at what percentage of the searches are child rescue.
I keep seeing this one, so I went and pulled the source. The number is real. It does not mean what the people posting it think it means, and the gap between the two is the whole argument.
It's 10,000 missing PERSONS, not children.
The figure comes from Flock Safety's own "2025 Impact Census," published on their blog in May 2026 and updated through July. Here's the primary source, read it yourself:
Their language is "missing persons." Roughly 27 per day, more than one an hour. CNN repeated it in a July 2026 piece. An a16z partner a firm that is an investor in Flock, which he didn't mention posted it on X where it got Community Noted.
Somewhere between the blog post and your feed, "persons" quietly became "children."
That single word swap is doing enormous work.
"Missing persons" in NCIC is dominated by three categories: runaway teenagers who come home on their own within days, adults with dementia who wandered (this is what Silver Alerts are for), and custodial-dispute cases where a parent took a kid. Those are real cases and finding people fast matters. But none of them are what "10,000 missing children" makes you picture. What you picture is stranger abduction. Stranger abductions in the US run roughly 100 per year, total, nationally. Not 10,000. About 100.
Here's the tell. Flock has had a formal partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children since 2021, specifically for AMBER Alert integration. That partnership's own publicized number, as of late 2025, is over 100 children recovered.. cumulative, across roughly five years.
So the company's own child-specific figure is approx 100 over five years, and the number circulating as a child figure is 10,000 per year. That's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap, and it exists entirely because someone dropped a noun.
The 10,000 itself is shakier than the headline suggests.
Set the children thing aside. Even as a missing-persons number, look at how it was produced:
It’s a vendor survey of its own customers. Roughly 700 agencies responded. Flock has around 7,000 law enforcement customers. That's about a 10% response rate, self-selected — agencies that love the product are the ones who fill out the survey about how much they love the product. Flock ran a goodness-of-fit test on population-size distribution to argue the sample is representative, which is fine as far as it goes, but matching on city size does not correct for enthusiasm bias.
Flock ran two extrapolation methods that produced ~9,900 and ~11,900. Then they bootstrapped it 1,000 times and got a range of 8,000 to 19,600..That is a 2.5x spread. When your confidence interval spans more than double, you don't have a measurement, you have an order of magnitude. Picking 10,000 out of that and calling it "conservative" is defensible; presenting it as a fact is not.
Credit where it's due: Flock explicitly labels these directional estimates rather than audited totals, publishes the methodology, and invites researchers to critique it at a listed email address. That is genuinely more transparency than most vendors offer. The people quoting the number strip all of that out.
The missing counterfactual is the actual problem.
This is the part nobody engages with.
"Located with Flock's help" is not the same as "would not have been located without Flock." Nowhere in the census is there a control group, a matched-jurisdiction comparison, a before/after with proper controls, or any attempt at establishing what would have happened anyway.
And what happens anyway is: most missing people are found, fast. NCMEC's own long-standing baseline, cited in Flock's *own* partnership announcement, is that about 74% of AMBER Alert cases are recovered within six hours and 93% within 24 hours. That was true before Flock existed. The relevant question is not "was a camera involved," it's "how many of these recoveries would not have happened, or would have happened too late, absent the camera network?"
Nobody has answered that. Not Flock, not the critics. It's the only number that would actually justify the tradeoff, and it doesn't exist.
Same structural issue with their other headline stat that ~20% of cleared cases in Flock jurisdictions involved Flock. "Involved" is not "caused." If an officer runs a plate during an investigation that was going to close anyway, that's a hit. The metric is built to only go up.
Now the other column of the ledger..
Everything above is about whether the benefit is as large as advertised. Here's what the same network has been documented doing. None of this is speculative; these are congressional letters, audit logs, and reporting.
Reproductive travel. In August 2025, Reps. Krishnamoorthi and Garcia sent Flock's CEO a letter documenting Texas authorities searching a network of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras nationwide — including cameras in Washington and Illinois, states where abortion is legally protected — while pursuing a woman over a self-administered abortion. The letter is public:
Immigration enforcement through the side door. Flock says ICE does not have direct platform access and that its CBP and HSI pilots ended. But audit-log reviews by journalists, academic researchers, and local officials keep finding local departments running searches on federal agencies' behalf, with officers typing reasons like "ICE," "ERO," "immigration," and "deportee" into the search-justification field. Virginia audits alone surfaced nearly 3,000 such searches. University of Washington researchers found at least eight Washington state agencies had, at some point in 2025, enabled direct network sharing with Border Patrol. NPR covered the cancellation wave this drove:
Personal stalking by officers: A Washington Post investigation in August 2026, plus tallies by the Institute for Justice, document a growing pile: officers charged over repeatedly querying romantic partners and their associates, a chief who tracked an ex-girlfriend and her new partner hundreds of times, an officer who checked whether an ex had visited an abortion clinic. Multiple resignations and terminations.
The scale: More than 120,000 cameras, roughly 7,000 agencies. And it's now contested enough that over 50 cities and counties cut ties with Flock during 2026, with more than 20 canceling in July alone — the biggest single month on record.
The structural argument, which matters more than any individual case…
Here's why the child-rescue framing is effective and why you should distrust it on sight.
A rescue is a discrete event with a photogenic ending and a named family. Surveillance is a standing capability with no ending at all. Those two things are not commensurable, and the rhetorical move is to make you compare them as if they were.
"If it saves one child" has no limiting principle. It cannot tell you 120,000 cameras is enough, or 500,000, or that facial recognition is a bridge too far, or that a 30-day retention window is better than a 365-day one. Every single expansion is justified by exactly the same anecdote, at exactly the same emotional volume, forever. A standard that approves everything isn't a standard.
And the capability outlives the intent. The people who signed the contract in 2023 to catch car thieves were not consenting to a nationwide plate-search network being queried on behalf of federal immigration enforcement in 2026. They didn't vote for that. It came free with the product. Whatever administration holds the executive branch in 2031 inherits the whole thing by default, and no city council anywhere gets a re-vote.
That's the trade: a bounded, self-reported, un-counterfactualed benefit against an unbounded option held by whoever is in charge later.
Thank you for adding more context surrounding Ms Scott's parking situation. With the push for her property to be rezoned, what would be the result? What will her responsibilities and obligations (taxes, for ex) be going forward? Will she then be subject to other laws that might further restrict her or ultimately force her to eliminate the parking on the future? Or, is this 'it' and she'll be free to continue unabated? That's why I asked what is the overall goal here. This remains unclear, and the message from council come across as bullying.
The Town Council, doesn't force the City Manager- Vosburg to follow the Unified Development Ordinance "UDO" do you? The City Council, is to make sure the City Manager follows the UDO, and the City Council's direction right? But you don't !! Article-11 of the "UDO" !! NC State Statute >> § 14-230. Willfully failing to discharge duties.
(a) If any clerk of any court of record, sheriff, magistrate, school board member, county commissioner, county surveyor, coroner, treasurer, or official of any of the State institutions, or of any county, city or town, shall willfully omit, neglect or refuse to discharge any of the duties of his office, for default whereof it is not elsewhere provided that he shall be indicted, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. If it shall be proved that such officer, after his qualification, willfully and corruptly omitted, neglected or refused to discharge any of the duties of his office, or willfully and corruptly violated his oath of office according to the true intent and meaning thereof, such officer shall be guilty of misbehavior in office, and shall be punished by removal therefrom under the sentence of the court as a part of the punishment for the offense.
(b) No magistrate recusing in accordance with G.S. 51-5.5 may be charged under this section for recusal to perform marriages in accordance with Chapter 51 of the General Statutes. (1901, c. 270, s. 2; Rev., s. 3592; C.S., s. 4384; 1943, c. 347; 1973, c. 108, s. 5; 1993, c. 539, s. 142; 1994, Ex. Sess., c. 24, s. 14(c); 2009-107, s. 1; 2015-75, s. 2.)
Why is it required for children to own, drive, and park cars in order to comply with state- mandated education? Clearly this situation demonstrates a lack of sufficient investment in pedestrian and bicycle access, not to mention buses.
I'm not sure what you mean - it's not required. I think it's just that Apex area students (and AFHS) have the highest proportion of car ownership in the county.
Many of the students with parking spots live less than a mile away in an adjacent neighborhood.
If I were in charge of school I would allocate spaces differently, and differentiate between students that have a legitimate demonstrated need (work, after school activity, late school arrival because of duel enrollment) over other students. But my understanding is right now it's just a lottery based on class rank (all seniors first, etc).
So I am a little frustrated and confused as to why it's uniquely the town's problem to solve, and we must do so by just not enforcing our laws. I don't think many people are considering how not enforcing laws has consequences (especially in other situations where the law has already been applied, and other situations where the law might apply in the future).
The lawsuit with Ms Scott seems like a distraction from the issue of parking shortage. I’d rather see public funds spent to solve the problem.
Town has an obligation to enforce the law. The lawsuit is just a step in that administrative process, it was not a subjective spending decision. A complaint was made and it kicked off a process that led to this when the property owner began ignoring the town.
This has been going on for 8 years based on your timeline. That’s enough time to establish a trend that needs a resolution. Is there any progress on legal parking?
Yes, actually: the Church is working to (legally) expand their lot. A new high school opened up which eased over crowding at this school
Increasing legal parking is the true solution. In fact, if the school provided a sufficient amount of parking spots, Ms. Annie would be out of business as there would be no need for her lot.
You can talk to them if you've like: but I have been told by the school that they don't see a problem. They never promised or attempt to provide a parking spot for all underclassmen, and that AFHS is not unique and many schools are in the same situation, and although having a wait list is not ideal it is far from an emergency and they do provide school buses for everyone.
There is a lot of on street parking nearby. I have been told since this came up that students have felt pinched here because HOA's etc have threatened them about parking in the neighborhoods or such. I am happy to help remind HOA's that they are public roads maintained and paid for by the town and town tax dollars, if necessary.
King Terry..., hmm you mean like this lawsuit Town of Apex v. Rubin? The Town of Apex, "trespassing" on private property, to put in a sewer line for the private good of a Builder? Which the Town of Apex lost in the NC Supreme Court !! The Town attorney, who retired in July 2026/yr. was totally involved in all of this right? Yes.. this is how the town of Apex rolls !! >> https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/2025/206pa21.html
I’ve lived in Apex for 20 years. And tonight I want to add my voice to the chorus pushing back against ALPRs, Flock, and police drones.
There’s a reason people all over this country are fighting back against these cameras right now. In Michigan, West Virginia, and New York, residents have, out of desperation, cut the cameras down. In California, a driver rammed his truck into three of them in a row. And in Florida, there is a retired man who has spent days sitting in a lawn chair, holding up a piece of cardboard, just to block the camera's lens. These people are frustrated and worried about being tracked, and sadly these people felt the need to take matters into their own hands. No one wants that. I don’t want that.
And it’s not only individuals. City governments are cancelling their Flock contracts — in Colorado, Oregon, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Washington state, and more. Some of the biggest cities in the country — Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Flagstaff — have walked away. And close to home, Hillsborough and Pittsboro have done the same.
Why? Because the misuse keeps happening. There are not enough controls in place. In Arizona an officer used Flock to track his own wife. In Mooresville an officer was arrested for using Flock to follow an ex-spouse. And in Georgia, six police employees were fired for searching the system to look up family members and acquaintances who had nothing to do with any investigation.
Six people. Fired. In one department. And I want to be clear: every example I just gave you happened in the past week. Not the past year — the past week.
So here’s where I land. I trust our Apex Police. I trust our Chief. I trust them with my life. They were trained and doing this job long before any of this unchecked and unwanted technology existed. And I know they are capable enough to keep us safe without a camera on every corner or more drones in the sky.
We are Apex — the Peak of Good Living. We are not Apex — the Peak of Surveillance. No more cameras. No Flock. No Axon. And absolutely No drones.
Thank you.
I think this whole flock camera protest is just like the fire station. Misinformation. Before I decide I want to see the statistics on how many valid arrests have been made vs. The misuse claims everyone is so worried about. You posted a one sided view but you're tracked on more data points by your cell phone. are you protesting that too?
Fair ask, K. Here's what I'd say, with actual data. No misinformation.
Let's start there: the arrest numbers people cite come from Flock's own self-reported "impact" surveys. The independent numbers are worse. LAPD's Inspector General audited the system in July 2025 and found a 32.3% error rate. 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in two months, each one an innocent driver getting pulled over. Roseville PD's own data on 1,427 alerts showed the software misread the plate in 71% of them.
In Toledo, a misread "7" as a "2" ended with Brandon Upchurch attacked by a police dog and a $35,000 settlement. If the pro-camera side had strong numbers, they'd be published. Most departments don't publish them at all..which is the oversight problem, not an answer to it.
On misuse, this isn't a rumor. The Institute for Justice has documented 44 separate incidents of officers using plate readers to stalk people. A Haines City, FL officer ran his estranged wife's plate 700+ times. A Kansas police chief ran an ex and her new boyfriend 200+ times. A Milwaukee officer, just undr 180 times in two months. Three Bibb County, GA deputies were charged with stalking this month. The part that should bother everyone: almost none of these were caught by internal audits. Victims found them, several through a site everyone should check out: HaveIBeenFlocked.com
Bigger than rogue cops is what's authorized. April 2025, Johnson County TX: a deputy searched 6,809 networks (83,345 cameras) to find a woman who'd had an abortion. The reason typed into the log was literally "had an abortion, search for female." The sheriff publicly called it a welfare check; the sworn affidavit called it a death investigation of a non-viable fetus, and deputies asked prosecutors about charging her. Illinois' Secretary of State audited Flock in August 2025 and found it violated state law barring this data from immigration and abortion enforcement. CBP had been given access, along with 551 out-of-state agencies. Evanston and Oak Park cancelled their contracts. EFF reviewed 12 million searches by 3,900+ agencies and found roughly 20% used reasons as meaningless as "investigation" while others were logged as "no kings," "KINGS DAY PROTEST," and, in one Oregon case, "hehehe."
As for misinformation: Flock told the Oshkosh city council its system doesn't build movement heat maps. It does. Council revoked approval the next morning. It told Loveland, CO that federal agencies had no access while holding CBP and DHS contracts. It told Urbana it designed its system with the ACLU..the ACLU says that never happened.
The phone comparison is the part I'd push hardest on. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held police need a warrant to get your phone's location history. Flock requires no warrant, no judge, and no notice. This is why I came and spoke, as well as the lack of controls. Today in Apex and everywhere, any officer with a login can search a nationwide network. I also chose my cell carrier, can turn off location, and can leave the phone home. Verizon can't handcuff me. As you said, you're already tracked by a company isn't consent for the government to do it without a warrant.
You made a great argument for less surveillance, not more.
I'm not against solving crimes. Require a warrant or documented supervisor approval with a specific case number, publish the audit logs quarterly, cap retention at days not weeks, ban out-of-state and federal sharing, and put real penalties on misuse. Support that and I'll drop my objection. Absent it, trust us, it's fine is the genuinely one-sided view.
The town isn't enforcing the laws fairly. They wrote a law effecting one person who wasn't violating the law for years till the council passed this law. Then they spend more money on an attorney then they could collect in fines. This was a extremely over reach by the council and whoever approved paying this attorney to collect these fines should have the money come out of their own pocket.
That’s not true
https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/2025/206pa21.html
What's not true about it
Literally everything - I explained above. If you didn’t believe it there and choose to believe misinformation instead, I doubt me repeating the timeline and process in the comments will convince you.
King Terry... , you and the Town Council won't/don't even enforce Article- 11 of the Town's Unified Development Ordinance! Isn't that right?
Again what's not true? I'm trying to enforce a new law that when there was no issue to stop someone who's been doing this for years legally
It's not a new law. Town Council is not involved in enforcement. Defendant will be responsible for legal fees. Town is obligated to take these actions.
Again what's not true, considering after this a few years ago from basically affecting this one person. Because people built around the land all of a sudden things change no. She was there first
https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/2025/206pa21.html
“What attracted me to Apex is its small town charm.”
This is an expression I have heard many times. It is the Christmas parade, 4th of July celebration of bikes, it is the pancake breakfast. It is the old shops, churches, preserved homes and yes, the volunteer fire house. It stands proudly above the log pond and the entrance to our town. It not only serves a function, in keeping our town safe, but also as a memorial to those who built it and then gave generously to protect Apex.
What makes Apex different from other towns is that we have preserved our buildings downtown. One exception, the out of character, half empty office building that coincidently sits across from the fire house.
I have seen the AI generated rendering of the museum/office building and it is a demolish - rebuild. While a beautiful building, it is a hollow tribute and a significant loss.
I encourage you to protect the character and charm of downtown. Not all knockdowns are improvements.
The problem is unfettered development. The town continues to approve massive construction of new townhomes and apartments in the AFHS area knowing that school is capped or overcrowded. They say to WCPSS you didn’t build enough parking but it’s passing the buck on a problem Apex TC created. Are you really surprised parking is an issue with the explosion of unchecked growth.?
I think having a healthy distrust of companies and government is warranted. I think Flock is providing a very valuable service to our community and helping to keep us safe. Yes, better controls are needed and Flock is working to put those in place. But they only capture license plates.
Apex PD has done a great job in keeping our community safe. But if Apex starts becoming the target of criminals our small police force will have a hard time handling the uptick. I was the victim of a home invasion before moving to Apex and feeling safe again. My previous neighborhood suffered many break-ins within a short period of time and we had to implement civilian patrols (neighborhood watch) in a very nice neighborhood. Let’s not be blinded by presumed civil liberties at the expense of keeping our community safe.
Does it have to be Flock? Do you feel that ALPRs are necessary to keep our communities safe? What is it about the "very valuable service" that Flock provides that no other solution can?
One of my biggest concerns is data ownership. Who owns the footage and data collected by the cameras: Flock or the City of Apex? I'm willing to accept that the city and private businesses use security cameras, but the assumption is that they have complete control over the data they record. I find it unacceptable that a third party can determine how long the footage can be retained, what can be done with it, and who can access it.
Speaking of which, I don't want law enforcement outside of Apex to have such easy access to footage of our town. As far as I understand, external entities are traditionally supposed to request permission from our law enforcement agencies if they have evidence or reasonable suspicion that someone who has been here is involved in a crime somewhere else. Police in Georgia shouldn't have easy, immediate access to footage of our town.
Flock also doesn't "only capture license plates." Their cameras record faces as well.
"Let’s not be blinded by presumed civil liberties at the expense of keeping our community safe" sounds like such a sad and dystopian sentiment. I just can't accept that having this much surveillance in our daily lives is necessary or OK.
And I find it particularly disturbing that such a technology has been introduced into our community without public comment first. (That is, as far as I'm aware. I moved here after the Flock cameras were installed.)
I've seen Flock cameras set up in certain neighborhoods, and I presume that that particular HOA had a discussion and voted on it, in which case, it is what it is. But seeing a Flock camera set up outside the parking lot of the Kelly Road playground -- a public space -- is upsetting.
Official Stance and Standard ALPR Design
No Facial Recognition: Standard Flock Safety systems are not built or marketed to store biometric data or identify drivers and passengers.
Vehicle Focus: The fixed cameras capture still images of passing cars, logging plates, bumper stickers, and vehicle characteristics rather than human demographic data.
Data Limits: Captured data is typically set to automatically delete after 30 days unless saved for an active police investigation.
Please do your own research and determine your level of comfort with this technology. While it might seem Big-Brotherish, it’s helping to keep us safe.
Crime happens. Don’t think because we live in a bubble here that it won’t happen to you.
I'm confused - whose "Official Stance" is this, yours or Flock's? Did you copy this from the Flock website? Is this an AI-generated response?
To clarify, the "Standard Flock Safety systems" may not be "built or marketed to store biometric data or identify drivers and passengers", but they still record faces nonetheless. We know this from leaked footage from ALPRs, and the fact that they have cameras for indoor use.
I'm also surprised that this response didn't include the fact that Flock recently updated their recommended data retention from 30 to 7 days as a way to appease concerned citizens. Regardless, it still doesn't address the fact that Apex doesn't own the footage.
It seems you are quite the fan of Flock. Would you feel the same way about Axon, or any other third party company surveilling and owning those recordings, and then permitting other law enforcement entities access to that footage?
Why do you feel that they are necessary for keeping our communities safe? What was wrong with putting together a neighborhood watch? Why are localized surveillance tools (like a camera that records to a server owned by the the business owner) insufficient?
That is really the crux of my issue here.
I’ve been on neighborhood watch. It’s not fun patrolling the night shift. Glad you feel like that’s a good use of your time.
Ben Franklin in 1755: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The half people forget is the second half.
It isn't only that you lose the liberty. It's that you don't get the safety either.
What we actually purchased was ten-ish cameras, a subscription, a national query network we don't control, and a set of promises from a company with a documented record of breaking them.
I support ALPR technology being used in Apex to allow the PD to receive a notification when a stolen or wanted person/vehicle enter our town limits so they can capture criminals and keep our town safe. We are being surveilled by location tracking on our phones without dissent. Red light cameras take an image of your face. ALPR’s only capture your license plate and is deleted after a period of time. I don’t care if they figure out where I shop or exercise. It is public record where I live.
I feel like there are two issues: ALPR as a technology and the massive private national database of everyones movements built by Flock that we are somehow paying them to ingest our citizens data into and also paying them to access, while they sell that data to other organizations
In theory we control who can access our citizens data, but what this means is we tell Flock who can access it, and hope they listen, and hope they aren't hacked etc. In practice it seems the expectation is that every law enforcement agency in the country shares with every other law enforcement agency in the country
I don't know the solution is but my instinct is this database just shouldn't exist as one big unit, held by a private company. And that it should require a court order or something to even be searched
It's really not about ALPR as a technology or concept that makes me uncomfortable
Yes, I agree with you. Flock is in the process of implementing better controls and approval processes as well as alerting to catch those that may be using the data outside of crime prevention. I think we should still push to make Flock accountable but in my view the benefits are clear. Keep our community safe.
I appreciate that we're closer than it might look.
But I'd point at the shape of that sentence: Flock is in the process of implementing better controls, and we should still push to make Flock accountable.
Read it again.
It concedes that the system is operating right now without the controls that would make it acceptable, and that holding it accountable is something we'll have to keep fighting for indefinitely. That's not a reassurance. That's a description of the problem.
A protection you have to keep asking a vendor to honor isn't a protection. It's a courtesy, revocable at will.
Consider who's promising. Flock told Loveland, Colorado that it had no federal contracts and that federal agencies had no access..,it had CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't produce movement heat maps... it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. And its own celebrated safeguard against improper abortion-related searches was defeated by officers typing "investigation," or literally "hehehe," into the justification box... 111 and 20 times in a single Oregon department in a single month. That's the same category of fix now being described as "better controls and approval processes."
And look at how the new ones work.
The accountability features Flock announced this month depend on the customer agency to enforce them. An audit log nobody reviews isn't a control, it's a receipt.
A free-text justification field isn't an approval process, it's a formality.
Real controls look like a warrant requirement, a retention limit measured in days, a hard prohibition on out-of-network queries, and published audits. None of which Flock can grant us, because they're terms we'd have to impose.
The sequencing is the whole game.
Apex signed in January 2025 and is negotiating the rules in year two, while the vendor holds the data and the leverage. The contract expires in January 2027. That renewal is the only moment we have any.
Asking for controls afterward is asking permission; requiring them beforehand is governing. (Is the council listening?)
And "the benefits are clear" should be easy to prove. Then let's see the numbers. How many Apex cases, cleared how, that wouldn't have been cleared otherwise? Our chief's own framing is stolen vehicles. If the benefit is clear, it's publishable... and it should be on the table before we re-up, not asserted.
Which brings me to the thing Franklin said in 1755:
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The half people forget is the second half. It isn't only that you lose the liberty. It's that you don't get the safety either. What we actually purchased was ten-ish cameras, a subscription, a national query network we don't control, and a set of promises from a company with a documented record of breaking them.
Meanwhile the thing the earlier commenter was actually afraid of, someone kicking in a door, is not something a plate reader prevents.
We don't demand warrants because we distrust the Chief.
We demand them because the rules have to hold when someone we haven't met yet has the keys.
Controls that only work if good people are in charge aren't controls. They're luck.
I want to start where you're both strongest. A home invasion is a real thing that happened to a real person, and Apex PD has earned the trust it has. Nothing below argues that crime doesn't matter or that our officers are acting in bad faith.
But 'they only capture license plates' is no longer accurate, and most of the rest of the argument rests on it. Flock now sells video clips and live feeds from those same poles, AI natural-language search of that footage, matching by vehicle color/make/damage/bumper stickers, integration with commercial data-broker "people lookup" services so an officer can jump from a plate to a person, a Business Network that lets private companies build shared watchlists, and analytics that algorithmically flag vehicles as suspicious which inverts the entire premise, generating suspicion instead of investigating it.
None of that required a second vote in Apex. It arrives by software update, under a contract we already signed.
"Deleted after a period of time" is a promise about one copy. The data doesn't stay in Apex. EFF obtained audit logs showing more than 12 million searches by over 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. One Texas search in an abortion investigation, annotated "had an abortion, search for female" reached 6,809 networks and 83,345 cameras nationwide. More than 80 agencies ran searches using anti-Roma slurs, frequently with no crime listed at all. Nineteen agencies ran searches tied to the No Kings protests. A 30-day deletion window touches none of that; once a query runs and the result lands in a case file, it lives on. Closer to home: an Apex resident documented 50 photographs of his own car during a single six-minute drive.
On 'better controls are coming' consider who is promising. Flock told Loveland, Colorado that federal agencies had no access and that it held no federal contracts; it held CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't generate movement heat maps; it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. Its own abortion-search safeguard was defeated by officers typing "investigation" or "hehehe" into the justification field, 111 and 20 times respectively in one Oregon departmnt in one month. The accountability features it announced this month depend on the customer to enforce them. Chief Johansen says "we do not share with federal entities, hard stop," and I believe that's his sincere intent but that same assurance was given sincerely in towns where it turned out not to be true, and Raleigh's logs already show searches labeled ICE.
The phone comparison actually cuts the other way. In June the Supreme Court held in Chatrie v. United States that location-history searches require a warrant, and expressly rejected the claim that short-term location data is harmless because even brief data reveals trips to psychiatric offices, abortion clinics, treatment centers. That is almost word for word Flock's defense of itself ("just point-in-time images of public roads"). And the analogies don't hold up: you chose to carry a phone and can leave it at home; a red light camera fires because someone ran a light. These cameras photograph every driver, continuously, with no suspicion of anything. Schmidt v. Norfolk is pending in the Fourth Circuit right now, this is the court that governs North Carolina.
Finally, the trade itself is smaller than advertised. ALPRs are a retrospective tool for vehicle-related cases...the clearance benefit shows up mainly in auto theft, and the evidence that they deter anything is thin.
Stolen vehicles are what our own chief points to. That's worth something. It's not a shield against a break-in per se.
So I'd push back on the phrase presumed civil liberties. Karen, I believe you when you say you have nothing to hide.
The protection isn't for you.
It's for the neighbor whose ex-partner wears a badge, the household with mixed immigration status, the person driving to a clinic or a recovery meeting or a demonstration.
You can waive your own privacy.
You can't waive theirs.
Our contract expires in January 2027. Hillsborough and Chatham County have already walked away, as have Austin, Evanston, and Eugene. Asking for a warrant standard, a hard local-only rule, a short retention limit and published audit logs before renewal isn't blindness to crime..it's the ordinary price citizens charge government for power.
Safety purchased with permanent, suspicionless tracking of everyone's movements isn't a bargain. It's a subscription.
"We are being surveilled by location tracking on our phones without dissent."
Respectfully, every part of that is wrong, and it's the load-bearing claim in the whole argument.
There has been enormous dissent and it won. Phone location is the most litigated, legislated, and regulated surveillance issue of the past decade. Carpenter (2018) held that police need a warrant for your phone's location history. This June, in Chatrie, the Supreme Court reaffirmed and extended that, and specifically rejected the idea that short-term location data is harmless because even a brief trail reveals visits to psychiatric offices, clinics, and treatment centers. In May, the FTC banned the data broker Kochava from selling sensitive location data at all. The House has passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act to stop agencies from simply buying what they'd otherwise need a warrant to get.
That's not acquiescence.
That's a decade of people fighting and winning.
And notice what they won on. Every one of those rulings rests on reasoning that condemns Flock rather than excusing it: that a record of where a person's vehicle has been, compiled indiscriminately and searchable after the fact, is a search and that the government needs a reason and a judge before it gets one.
You consented to the phone. Nobody consented to this. You bought the device, you carry it by choice, you can deny an app location access, turn the radio off, or leave it on the counter. When Apple finally asked people plainly whether they wanted to be tracked, the overwhelming majority said no which is your dissent, expressed the moment anyone bothered to ask.
There is no such prompt for Flock.
There is no setting, no opt-out, and no way to drive to work in Apex without being photographed and logged. That difference isn't a technicality; consent is the entire thing.
And the watcher is different. Google logging your location to sell you shoes is a commercial harm. A police-operated camera network exists to generate evidence for prosecution. Same data, categorically different stakes..one can annoy you, the other can charge you, jail you, or hand you to ICE. The Fourth Amendment binds one and not the other for exactly that reason.
So the phone comparison gets it backwards. Phone location is the one kind of tracking we've actually built rules around: warrants, judges, FTC enforcement. Flock is the route around those rules: identical location history, no warrant, no judge, no notice to anyone. Worse, Flock has announced plans to plug into commercial data brokers so an officer can go from a plate to a named person...which fuses the camera network to the very data-broker loophole Congress is trying to close.
Flock just the other day helped identify a suspect in Raleigh involving a murder. Too much misinformation out there that people believe. . Flock is another pair of eyes for the police
You're right about the case, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
Sheremy Gwenette Dillard, a beloved Wake County girls' basketball coach, was found stabbed to death in her Raleigh home on August 15. Rickey Harper was charged with first-degree murder and arrested the next afternoon in Plymouth Township, Pennsylvania. Raleigh police said Flock cameras helped them determine that Harper had driven away from the scene and helped develop the leads that identified him as a suspect. That's WRAL and ABC11. It's a real case and a real result, and Dillard's family got an arrest in about 26 hours.
Now look at what actually happened there, because it's the best argument for our position that anyone in this thread has offered. And I'm so glad you posted it.
Harper was her boyfriend. He lived in that house. When officers arrived on a welfare check and found her body, the man who lived there was gone. No camera network was needed to generate that suspicion... it was the first thing any detective in America would look at.
What Flock did was confirm his vehicle leaving and give them a direction. Genuinely valuable.
Also: exactly the kind of narrow, individualized query that every safeguard we've been asking for would permit without a second's delay.
That's the whole point. Nobody in this debate is arguing police shouldn't be able to search plate data for a named murder suspect in an active homicide.
Bring a case number and a plate to a magistrate and you get it, Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon, with time to spare. The dispute has never been about Rickey Harper. It's about the millions of us who aren't Rickey Harper, whose movements are recorded continuously and held against the day somebody wants to look.
Flock's own audit logs obtained by EFF, not invented by activists show more than 12 million searches by 3,900+ agencies in under a year, including hundreds tied to political protests, searches run with anti-Roma slurs and no crime listed, and a Texas abortion investigation query that swept 83,345 cameras nationwide.
The Dillard case and those searches came out of the same system. The only thing that separates them is a rule, and right now there isn't one.
On "another pair of eyes" I'd retire that metaphor, because it flatters the technology. A pair of eyes doesn't remember every car it has ever seen. It can't be asked, three weeks later, where you were on a Tuesday. It doesn't share what it saw with thousands of agencies in other states. That's not an extra officer on the corner, it's a searchable record of everyone's movements, which is a different thing in kind, not degree.
And on misinformation: the best-documented false statements in this whole controversy came from Flock. It told Loveland, Colorado it had no federal contracts while holding CBP and DHS contracts with direct access. It told Oshkosh, Wisconsin its system didn't generate heat maps; it does. It claimed ACLU partnerships that never existed. I'll happily correct anything I've gotten wrong.
Here's where I'd actually meet you: Raleigh publishes its numbers: 306 leads, 244 cases cleared, 154 stolen vehicles recovered since January 2025. Fine.
Notice that not one of those clearances required keeping data on people who aren't suspects.
They came from targeted searches.
So let's have Apex publish its own numbers before the January 2027 renewal, and put the warrant standard, the retention limit, and the audit publication in the contract.
Terry? Agreed?
If the system is as valuable as the Dillard case suggests, it survives those terms easily.
If it can't survive them, that tells us something too.
We all agreed? Thanks again.
I appreciate your insight I also just learned that the cameras have also helped locate 10,000 missing children.
It’s 10,000 missing PERSONS, not children.
The figure comes from Flock Safety’s own “2025 Impact Census,” published on their blog in May 2026 and updated through July. Here’s the primary source, read it yourself:
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock
Their language is “missing persons.” Roughly 27 per day, more than one an hour. CNN repeated it in a July 2026 piece. An a16z partner — a firm that is an investor in Flock, which he didn’t mention — posted it on X where it got Community Noted. Somewhere between the blog post and your feed, “persons” quietly became “children.”
That single word swap is doing enormous work.
“Missing persons” in NCIC is dominated by three categories: runaway teenagers who come home on their own within days, adults with dementia who wandered (this is what Silver Alerts are for), and custodial-dispute cases where a parent took a kid. Those are real cases and finding people fast matters. But none of them are what “10,000 missing children” makes you picture. What you picture is stranger abduction. Stranger abductions in the US run roughly 100 per year, total, nationally. Not 10,000. About 100.
Here’s the tell. Flock has had a formal partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children since 2021, specifically for AMBER Alert integration. That partnership’s own publicized number, as of late 2025, is over 100 children recovered — cumulative, across roughly five years.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-ncmec-and-flock-safety-bring-missing-children-home
So the company’s own child-specific figure is ~100 over five years, and the number circulating as a child figure is 10,000 per year. That’s a two-orders-of-magnitude gap, and it exists entirely because someone dropped a noun.
Excellent, but actually there are a lot more then 100 stranger abductions in a year including human trafficking
Fair point on the number, so let me be precise about what it counts.
The roughly 100 figure is the federal estimate for what OJJDP calls stereotypical kidnappings: a stranger or slight acquaintance takes a child who is then transported more than 50 miles, held overnight, held for ransom, kept permanently, or killed.
That estimate was 105 in 2011 and 115 in 1997. It is deliberately narrow. Broader non-family abductions run around 58,000 and family abductions around 200,000.
So yes, the total is much larger.
The problem is that expanding the category moves toward crimes a plate camera does almost nothing about.
Family abductions were 59 percent of AMBER Alerts issued in 2023. Those are custody cases where the parent, the car, and usually the destination are already known.
On trafficking, this is where the argument really breaks.
Trafficking is not abduction, and conflating them is the single most common error in this debate. The Human Trafficking Institute found that of 71 new federal sex trafficking victims in 2021 where a recruitment method was known, exactly one involved kidnapping. A separate nine-year review of trafficking cases found fewer than 10 percent involved kidnapping at all. Polaris, which runs the national hotline, says flatly that traffickers rarely target people they don't know, and that most victims are recruited by romantic partners, family members, and acquaintances using manipulation rather than force. A trafficker who has spent two months grooming a sixteen-year-old on Instagram does not need to throw her in a van. There is no plate to flag.
Plate readers do occasionally work.
A one-year-old was taken from a stroller in Chamblee, Georgia and Flock cameras helped locate the SUV. Real case, real kid home safe. I'm not going to pretend the number is zero.
But look at the scale of the mechanism. In 2023 there were 183 AMBER Alert recoveries, of which 49 were direct results of the alert, and one in four of those came from a person spotting the described vehicle. That is roughly a dozen cases nationally, and those were human eyes.
Weigh that against what the network is actually queried for. As I mentioned, a Texas abortion investigation reached 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks. An Illinois Secretary of State audit found 262 immigration-related searches in one suburb over four months. EFF reviewed more than 12 million searches from 3,900 agencies and found hundreds tied to protests and activism. The ACLU of Massachusetts found officers routinely typing "investigation" or "susp" as their justification, and one Oregon department entered "hehehe" 20 times.
If the case for the cameras is child rescue, the audits are public. Go look at what percentage of the searches are child rescue.
Focusing on her relationship with the mayor misses the real issue facing our community. While we debate optics, the underlying problem remains unsolved—and our teens are the ones paying the price.
Critiquing a dedicated property owner on legal technicalities without acknowledging her intent to solve a local crisis sends the wrong message. It frames someone trying to help as a villain rather than a partner.
Once this story leaves the news cycle, our community will still need real solutions. We have an opportunity to set aside the rhetoric, acknowledge the good-faith efforts being made, and work together for our youth.
Opposer, please take a deep breath before focusing on your defense.
The poll question re: Ms Scott is misleading and inappropriate to the discussion here. Apex residents need to understand what is driving this lawsuit, that WE need to pay for to the tune of multiple times the amount being charged to Ms Scott. Is it that TOA isn't receiving profits from these parking fees? Seems ludicrous to continue pursuing this over $3,700. The actual Mayor is the only one of you elected officials who actually wants to help the owner and ease the parking situation there. Why is that? What is this particular property worth to the council?!
I agree that it's important for Apex residents to understand what is driving the lawsuit, because it's clear you have been misinformed.
This is a code enforcement action that doesn't involve the Council or any elected official. It's "automatic" - it's the step of the process the property is in because various letters, fines etc have been ignored.
This is actually an important concern because the poll and recap sends a message that paints her as someone breaking the law, aka a criminal. If that is the message you want to send are you willing to explicitly state that about this property owner?
What is driving the lawsuit is that she's ignoring the town's UDO (laws) about what is allowed to be done with her property and citizens have complained about it to the town and the town needs to enforce it's laws. The point of the fines isn't the money its to compel compliance. The mayor appears to "help" her because they're old friends, but he won't talk her into rezoning, which could bring her property into compliance, allow parking and solve all of this.
If she doesn’t want to rezone she doesn’t have to. She has the right to self determination. So the result the town might be pacified by is really if students don’t park there. School starts Monday. Students will just park in the neighborhoods on the town roads I guess. Everyone will then be happy and we can obviously move on to bigger and better things and feel GREAT about this outcome.
Correct, she does not have to rezone if she does not want to.
https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/2025/206pa21.html
Is that supposed to have something to do with this case?
Well, read it. You will then understand that this is how the Town of Apex rolls!! The Town of Apex, allowed a sewer line to be placed on private property for the private good of a Builder !! Read it !!
I've read it, it is not in any way relevant to the town enforcing it's UDO in this case!! !!
You still don't get it.
I know that fire trucks are much larger than those of prior times. Seems to me the best idea is to move operations to a modern facility and repurpose the current facility, keeping its history front of mind.
emove all ALPR / Cameras. This is America We have Freedom and was and is paid for in Full by the Blood and Lives of Men Women and Children from 1776 and before. 24-7 surveillance is for People in Prison and People found Guilty of Crimes IE Ankle Monitors / Mr. Scott needs to be left alone. Pretty simple see previous statement. And the Mayor gave Her a pass in 25'. ( See WRAL public articles ) / The Station= It's been a issue even before the current Board Members. What to do? How about listen to The People of Apex ( I know that's hard for You to do and Understand ) Be Transparent ( Mandatory and You have not been ) .....But You were Elected for the People Not to do as You wish ( That needs to End ASAP ). * Footnote= If Someone really cares for Apex and want's to be a Hero how about put into Apex Plans Cemetery's For Us and Our Families. I am 54 / Went to Baucom / Grandparents moved here in 53' and I or My Children have no Dirt and can buy no Dirt here in Apex to be laid to Rest in. That would be "New Growth" The Board would go down in History in a Good way VS what is and has been going on........
Fair point on the number, so let me be precise about what it counts.
The roughly 100 figure is the federal estimate for what OJJDP calls stereotypical kidnappings: a stranger or slight acquaintance takes a child who is then transported more than 50 miles, held overnight, held for ransom, kept permanently, or killed.
That estimate was 105 in 2011 and 115 in 1997. It is deliberately narrow. Broader non-family abductions run around 58,000 and family abductions around 200,000.
So yes, the total is much larger.
The problem is that expanding the category moves toward crimes a plate camera does almost nothing about.
Family abductions were 59 percent of AMBER Alerts issued in 2023. Those are custody cases where the parent, the car, and usually the destination are already known.
On trafficking, this is where the argument really breaks.
Trafficking is not abduction, and conflating them is the single most common error in this debate. The Human Trafficking Institute found that of 71 new federal sex trafficking victims in 2021 where a recruitment method was known, exactly one involved kidnapping. A separate nine-year review of trafficking cases found fewer than 10 percent involved kidnapping at all. Polaris, which runs the national hotline, says flatly that traffickers rarely target people they don't know, and that most victims are recruited by romantic partners, family members, and acquaintances using manipulation rather than force. A trafficker who has spent two months grooming a sixteen-year-old on Instagram does not need to throw her in a van. There is no plate to flag.
Plate readers do occasionally work.
A one-year-old was taken from a stroller in Chamblee, Georgia and Flock cameras helped locate the SUV. Real case, real kid home safe. I'm not going to pretend the number is zero.
But look at the scale of the mechanism. In 2023 there were 183 AMBER Alert recoveries, of which 49 were direct results of the alert, and one in four of those came from a person spotting the described vehicle. That is roughly a dozen cases nationally, and those were human eyes.
Weigh that against what the network is actually queried for. As I mentioned, a Texas abortion investigation reached 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks. An Illinois Secretary of State audit found 262 immigration-related searches in one suburb over four months. EFF reviewed more than 12 million searches from 3,900 agencies and found hundreds tied to protests and activism. The ACLU of Massachusetts found officers routinely typing "investigation" or "susp" as their justification, and one Oregon department entered "hehehe" 20 times.
If the case for the cameras is child rescue, the audits are public. Go look at what percentage of the searches are child rescue.
I keep seeing this one, so I went and pulled the source. The number is real. It does not mean what the people posting it think it means, and the gap between the two is the whole argument.
It's 10,000 missing PERSONS, not children.
The figure comes from Flock Safety's own "2025 Impact Census," published on their blog in May 2026 and updated through July. Here's the primary source, read it yourself:
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-effective-is-flock
Their language is "missing persons." Roughly 27 per day, more than one an hour. CNN repeated it in a July 2026 piece. An a16z partner a firm that is an investor in Flock, which he didn't mention posted it on X where it got Community Noted.
Somewhere between the blog post and your feed, "persons" quietly became "children."
That single word swap is doing enormous work.
"Missing persons" in NCIC is dominated by three categories: runaway teenagers who come home on their own within days, adults with dementia who wandered (this is what Silver Alerts are for), and custodial-dispute cases where a parent took a kid. Those are real cases and finding people fast matters. But none of them are what "10,000 missing children" makes you picture. What you picture is stranger abduction. Stranger abductions in the US run roughly 100 per year, total, nationally. Not 10,000. About 100.
Here's the tell. Flock has had a formal partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children since 2021, specifically for AMBER Alert integration. That partnership's own publicized number, as of late 2025, is over 100 children recovered.. cumulative, across roughly five years.
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/how-ncmec-and-flock-safety-bring-missing-children-home
So the company's own child-specific figure is approx 100 over five years, and the number circulating as a child figure is 10,000 per year. That's a two-orders-of-magnitude gap, and it exists entirely because someone dropped a noun.
The 10,000 itself is shakier than the headline suggests.
Set the children thing aside. Even as a missing-persons number, look at how it was produced:
It’s a vendor survey of its own customers. Roughly 700 agencies responded. Flock has around 7,000 law enforcement customers. That's about a 10% response rate, self-selected — agencies that love the product are the ones who fill out the survey about how much they love the product. Flock ran a goodness-of-fit test on population-size distribution to argue the sample is representative, which is fine as far as it goes, but matching on city size does not correct for enthusiasm bias.
Flock ran two extrapolation methods that produced ~9,900 and ~11,900. Then they bootstrapped it 1,000 times and got a range of 8,000 to 19,600..That is a 2.5x spread. When your confidence interval spans more than double, you don't have a measurement, you have an order of magnitude. Picking 10,000 out of that and calling it "conservative" is defensible; presenting it as a fact is not.
Credit where it's due: Flock explicitly labels these directional estimates rather than audited totals, publishes the methodology, and invites researchers to critique it at a listed email address. That is genuinely more transparency than most vendors offer. The people quoting the number strip all of that out.
The missing counterfactual is the actual problem.
This is the part nobody engages with.
"Located with Flock's help" is not the same as "would not have been located without Flock." Nowhere in the census is there a control group, a matched-jurisdiction comparison, a before/after with proper controls, or any attempt at establishing what would have happened anyway.
And what happens anyway is: most missing people are found, fast. NCMEC's own long-standing baseline, cited in Flock's *own* partnership announcement, is that about 74% of AMBER Alert cases are recovered within six hours and 93% within 24 hours. That was true before Flock existed. The relevant question is not "was a camera involved," it's "how many of these recoveries would not have happened, or would have happened too late, absent the camera network?"
Nobody has answered that. Not Flock, not the critics. It's the only number that would actually justify the tradeoff, and it doesn't exist.
Same structural issue with their other headline stat that ~20% of cleared cases in Flock jurisdictions involved Flock. "Involved" is not "caused." If an officer runs a plate during an investigation that was going to close anyway, that's a hit. The metric is built to only go up.
Now the other column of the ledger..
Everything above is about whether the benefit is as large as advertised. Here's what the same network has been documented doing. None of this is speculative; these are congressional letters, audit logs, and reporting.
Reproductive travel. In August 2025, Reps. Krishnamoorthi and Garcia sent Flock's CEO a letter documenting Texas authorities searching a network of more than 83,000 ALPR cameras nationwide — including cameras in Washington and Illinois, states where abortion is legally protected — while pursuing a woman over a self-administered abortion. The letter is public:
https://krishnamoorthi.house.gov/media/press-releases/ranking-members-krishnamoorthi-and-garcia-demand-accountability-flock-group
Immigration enforcement through the side door. Flock says ICE does not have direct platform access and that its CBP and HSI pilots ended. But audit-log reviews by journalists, academic researchers, and local officials keep finding local departments running searches on federal agencies' behalf, with officers typing reasons like "ICE," "ERO," "immigration," and "deportee" into the search-justification field. Virginia audits alone surfaced nearly 3,000 such searches. University of Washington researchers found at least eight Washington state agencies had, at some point in 2025, enabled direct network sharing with Border Patrol. NPR covered the cancellation wave this drove:
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts-canceled-immigration-survillance-concerns
Personal stalking by officers: A Washington Post investigation in August 2026, plus tallies by the Institute for Justice, document a growing pile: officers charged over repeatedly querying romantic partners and their associates, a chief who tracked an ex-girlfriend and her new partner hundreds of times, an officer who checked whether an ex had visited an abortion clinic. Multiple resignations and terminations.
The scale: More than 120,000 cameras, roughly 7,000 agencies. And it's now contested enough that over 50 cities and counties cut ties with Flock during 2026, with more than 20 canceling in July alone — the biggest single month on record.
The structural argument, which matters more than any individual case…
Here's why the child-rescue framing is effective and why you should distrust it on sight.
A rescue is a discrete event with a photogenic ending and a named family. Surveillance is a standing capability with no ending at all. Those two things are not commensurable, and the rhetorical move is to make you compare them as if they were.
"If it saves one child" has no limiting principle. It cannot tell you 120,000 cameras is enough, or 500,000, or that facial recognition is a bridge too far, or that a 30-day retention window is better than a 365-day one. Every single expansion is justified by exactly the same anecdote, at exactly the same emotional volume, forever. A standard that approves everything isn't a standard.
And the capability outlives the intent. The people who signed the contract in 2023 to catch car thieves were not consenting to a nationwide plate-search network being queried on behalf of federal immigration enforcement in 2026. They didn't vote for that. It came free with the product. Whatever administration holds the executive branch in 2031 inherits the whole thing by default, and no city council anywhere gets a re-vote.
That's the trade: a bounded, self-reported, un-counterfactualed benefit against an unbounded option held by whoever is in charge later.
Thank you for adding more context surrounding Ms Scott's parking situation. With the push for her property to be rezoned, what would be the result? What will her responsibilities and obligations (taxes, for ex) be going forward? Will she then be subject to other laws that might further restrict her or ultimately force her to eliminate the parking on the future? Or, is this 'it' and she'll be free to continue unabated? That's why I asked what is the overall goal here. This remains unclear, and the message from council come across as bullying.
The Town Council, doesn't force the City Manager- Vosburg to follow the Unified Development Ordinance "UDO" do you? The City Council, is to make sure the City Manager follows the UDO, and the City Council's direction right? But you don't !! Article-11 of the "UDO" !! NC State Statute >> § 14-230. Willfully failing to discharge duties.
(a) If any clerk of any court of record, sheriff, magistrate, school board member, county commissioner, county surveyor, coroner, treasurer, or official of any of the State institutions, or of any county, city or town, shall willfully omit, neglect or refuse to discharge any of the duties of his office, for default whereof it is not elsewhere provided that he shall be indicted, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. If it shall be proved that such officer, after his qualification, willfully and corruptly omitted, neglected or refused to discharge any of the duties of his office, or willfully and corruptly violated his oath of office according to the true intent and meaning thereof, such officer shall be guilty of misbehavior in office, and shall be punished by removal therefrom under the sentence of the court as a part of the punishment for the offense.
(b) No magistrate recusing in accordance with G.S. 51-5.5 may be charged under this section for recusal to perform marriages in accordance with Chapter 51 of the General Statutes. (1901, c. 270, s. 2; Rev., s. 3592; C.S., s. 4384; 1943, c. 347; 1973, c. 108, s. 5; 1993, c. 539, s. 142; 1994, Ex. Sess., c. 24, s. 14(c); 2009-107, s. 1; 2015-75, s. 2.)
Why is it required for children to own, drive, and park cars in order to comply with state- mandated education? Clearly this situation demonstrates a lack of sufficient investment in pedestrian and bicycle access, not to mention buses.
I'm not sure what you mean - it's not required. I think it's just that Apex area students (and AFHS) have the highest proportion of car ownership in the county.
Many of the students with parking spots live less than a mile away in an adjacent neighborhood.
If I were in charge of school I would allocate spaces differently, and differentiate between students that have a legitimate demonstrated need (work, after school activity, late school arrival because of duel enrollment) over other students. But my understanding is right now it's just a lottery based on class rank (all seniors first, etc).
So I am a little frustrated and confused as to why it's uniquely the town's problem to solve, and we must do so by just not enforcing our laws. I don't think many people are considering how not enforcing laws has consequences (especially in other situations where the law has already been applied, and other situations where the law might apply in the future).